Not Just a Man's World

I need to increase my work capacity.  I’d like to achieve the following:

• Be able to eat more;
• Be able to go for bike rides next summer without worrying how they will impact on my next workout;
• Do extra bits of fun workout (like mucking about in the gym with the sandbags) without ruining my numbers the next day;
• Be able to eat even more (I really do enjoy my food);
• Seriously start to work towards my medium-term goal of competing at powerlifting, which I can’t do if I’m seriously restricted in how much I can workout.

Winter opportunity

My winter muscle-building has a couple of benefits:

1. It’s winter.  I wear baggy jumpers.  Nobody (other than my long-suffering partner, Chris) sees my figure so I can eat plenty to help build my work capacity and not worry if I get it a bit wrong and put on a little weight.  Though, as I explained before, I am taking care with the diet as well.
2. Muscle-building means I’m going to benefit from doing extra exercises anyway, so if I work on building my work capacity I should get a good cross-over with my main winter goal.

So I’m going to grab this opportunity by the scruff of the neck and do everything in my power to increase my work capacity.

Where I’m starting from

I’m a lot better than I used to be, but the list below is currently the most I can manage in a standard week (not in a holiday week when I usually walk 7-8 hours or cycle 50-60 miles every day for 5 or 6 consecutive days – I usually have a week off after that).

• 4 workouts a week for 3-4 consecutive weeks, each containing one main exercise on 10 sets of 3 reps and 2 assistance exercises on 5 sets of 8 reps.
• 1 long walk, about 2 – 2.5 hours long.
• 1 long bike ride (4-5 hours) or 2 fasted bike rides (2 hours long).

If I try to do any more I keel over from overtraining after about 2 weeks.

How to increase work capacity

So how am I going to do it?

1. Increase the size of my workouts:  I’ve started with an increase to my workouts.  Each lower body workout has gained a second main exercise and I’m increasing the number of assistance exercises to 3 or 4, depending on the main exercises (deadlifts have a harder impact on the body than split squats, so deadlift day may stick at 3 assistance exercises).
2. Increase my bike rides:  Our next cycle tour is planned for March.  Historically we’ve lost cycling fitness over the winter months when we are only doing one or two short rides a week rather than our long endurance ride every other week.  This winter we are getting in two fasted rides at the weekend whenever possible (other commitments permitted) and a night ride after work one day mid-week.

I’ll take it from there.  I decided when I started this after my holiday that I should keep my upper body workouts as they are for now since I’ve had problems with overtraining my arms in the past.  After two weeks of this new workout regime I’m tempted to take a new view on that and try increasing my upper body workouts as well.

How to survive the increased workload

Eat and sleep more.  It’s that simple (or so I’m told).

Eat more:  If I’m going to have the calories to handle the extra work I’m going to need to eat more.  This is where the baggy jumpers come in.  For the next few months my callipers will become my best friend enabling me to keep track of when I am putting on fat (so eating more calories than I need) and when I’m losing fat (so not eating enough, though the lack of recovery will probably also be a good indicator for this).

Sleep more:  My body is going to need time to recover.  The best recovery time is sleep, so there are a few rules I’m going to try to stick to:

• Create a bat cave – I don’t keep any electrical items in my bedroom anyway, except for a small alarm clock which only lights up if I press a button, but winter also helps with this since it will be dark when I go to bed and dark when I wake up;
• Be consistent in bedtimes and waking times – I get better sleep if I get to bed at about the same time every day and wake up at the same time;
• Read in bed for the last half hour before I go to sleep – personal experience has also shown that sleep is a better quality if I avoid televisions and computers just before trying to get to sleep; and
• Eat more – it’s all a bit circular but I found when I was cutting that I also suffered from insomnia.  The extra food now won’t just help with the quality of my recovery, it should also help the quality of my sleep.

Before I get any further into trying to increase my work capacity, does anyone have any other suggestions for me?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: getting work capacity right!
2. Work-Life balance
3. Lessons learned this week: the art of relaxation
4. Lessons learned this week: the menstrual cycle and making workouts more challenging